Mr. Bacon successfully quashed the Great Dodgeball Uprising of early 1972. (See my previous post for details). But this proved to be no more than a tactical loss for the revolution.
Consider:
At that time, the number of girls who played high school sports in the United States numbered about 300,000. Today it is around 3 million. Sports used to be largely a male domain. The small percentage of females who played sports usually were not taken very seriously — though female cheerleaders for boys’ sports usually were.
Today, however, girls’ athletics enjoys a much higher status. A girl who plays high school sports can still be considered quite “cool” by her peers. That “cool” status does not come in spite her athletic prowess, but often because of it. (Do young people still say “cool?” I’m 52 years-old. It is so hard to know these things, anymore).
The revolution of females and sports swept the nation and the world, for that matter.
Who, in 1972, saw this coming? Mr. Bacon didn’t. Hmm. Neither did I, come to think of it.
But why the revolution? A common explanation, exemplified by a Sports Illustrated article from a couple of years ago, states that this came about because Congress passed Title IX in 1972. The key part of that law stated, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
Gosh, that sounds like Sharon Osowski had read the text, doesn’t it? Actually, the legislators weren’t thinking about athletics (it wasn’t even mentioned in the law), they were thinking about other areas of education. But the most notable impact seems to have been in the area of sports. And maybe recess.
There are a number of interesting questions that have been discussed here, such as the extent to which the playing field (pun intended) between females and males is or is not level today, and whether Title IX has hurt certain male sports in high school and college.
But I’m more interested in the historical question of whether or not we can really say that Title IX caused all of this.
Why? Here is what I find interesting: Title IX was passed in June of 1972, several months after the Great Dodgeball Uprising of Mary L. Daly Elementary School. How could Sharon Osowski, a 4th grade girl from Elkhart, Indiana, show more foresight than Congress? (Insert joke about Congress here).
Other things were in the works besides politics, of course. If 4th-grade girls in Elkhart, Indiana were challenging existing gender norms in 1972, then something was afoot in the wider culture. When I tell this story to my American history class, I ask my students to imagine how it would have played out differently if Mr. Bacon’s dilemma had occurred in 1952 instead of 1972. My students usually point out that girls in 1952 probably would have accepted Mr. Bacon’s original plan. It is quite likely they would not have organized a protest, though they might have said something. Some students observe that in 1952 the girls might not have even really cared about playing dodgeball.
We then dig into the possible reasons for why Sharon Osowski would have thought to lead a protest march in 1972. I point out that it is quite unlikely that her parents had sat her down in kindergarten and explained to her that if she were ever treated unjustly in school, she must organize her group, assemble protest signs, create pithy slogans, and then march around in front of the authorities. However, it is quite possible her parents raised her in a way to be aware of these issues.
The logic makes no sense: cigarettes for women = women’s rights. But we accepted it anyway, along with the other message that roles for women were changing.
The other main factor here, though is media. I’m guessing that none of the girls in my class knew who Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan were, but I’m pretty sure that they all, like me, had seen independent women on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Mod Squad” or Virginia Slims commercials. Furthermore, weren’t similar attitudes towards girls and sports changing in Britain, Canada, Belgium and other nations outside the jurisdiction of Title IX?
So which had a greater causal effect: Title IX or the thousands, maybe millions, of ways throughout the late 1960s and 1970s that ordinary women (and girls!) were acting differently than they had two decades before? If Title IX had not passed, would anything have changed? Probably, but how much? If Title IX had passed in 1952, would it have caused the same amount of change?
I don’t know. Obviously the changes came about because of a combination of complex factors. But it is a reminder that changes in society take place every day, through the cumulative effect of the actions of ordinary people like Sharon Osowski who, as we stop to think about it, was on the cutting edge of a revolution in gender and sports. (My 4th grade self hesitates to call her “ordinary” — because she might be doing remarkable things today. I don’t know.)
And finally, to commemorate the Great Dodgeball Uprising of 1972, here is a link to the only thing that, in my 4th grade world, would have been greater than a game of dodgeball: a game of dodgeball played against Major League baseball players! Epic.